Ist der Mond auch da, wenn man nicht hinsieht? Von der Paul-Falle zu Schrödingers Katze.

Anlässlich der Verleihung des Nobelpreises in Physik 2012 an Serge Haroche und David Wineland wird Prof. Meschede die damit gewürdigten Forschungsarbeiten in einem öffentlichen Vortrag vorstellen. Alle Studierenden, Mitarbeiter der physikalischen Institute und an der Physik Interessierten sind herzlich eingeladen. 

Der Vortrag findet am 31. Oktober 2012 um 16:00 Uhr im Wolfgang-Paul-Hörsaal statt.

Serge Haroche and David Wineland win today the Nobel Prize in Physics 2012 for their groundbreaking researches on the control of individual quantum particles and the fundamental physical laws which govern their interactions. 

People in Bonn still remembers the beautiful Plücker lecture 2011 given by Serge Haroche. 

We feel very excited for this price awarding and we would like to send to both of them our warmest congratulations!!!!

The final workshop of the Forschergruppe 635 will be held in Bonn at the end of July, 30th and 31st.

The workshop will bring together leading scientists from both the theoretical and experimental side to promote and discuss most recent ideas in distributed systems of neutral atoms. The numerous achievements obtained by this research field have raised a large interest and great expectation that these systems could be used in future as quantum technologies. Quantum simulators and quantum networks are examples of new systems capable of performing tasks that are currently impossible with our classical technology.

For more information, please visit the workshop website. Limited places are still available. If interested, please contact the organizing committee and submit your application.

Coherent splitting a single atom. (a) A spin-dependent optical lattice (red wave) transports the atom depending on its spin state (color) in opposite directions. After merging the two paths again, the accumulated quantum phase is measured. (b) Fluorescence images of single atoms (coloured) illustrate the mesoscopic spatial splitting achieved in the experiment.

We have recently shown that the wave function of a single atom can be manipulated to form the atom-analogue of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer: a single atom is split over a mesoscopic distance and coherently recombined to read out the quantum phase information. By using trapped atoms in a spin-dependent optical lattice, the interfering quantum paths can be steered with very high precision, while the atomic wavepackets remain tightly localized. The coherent splitting over up to 10 µm demonstrad here is implemented from of a sequence of about 100 discrete elementary quantum operations, which can be used to "program" complex interferometer geometries from basic building blocks. In this way, control over neutral particles is pushed to a new level. Our results have recently appeared in PNAS, see also the corresponding press release.